Hello, first post! Not sure if everyone saw, but paul_met over at romhacking released wide mode hacks for NHL 94/95/96/97 & 98, these are not widescreen hacks, but wide mode hacks, which change the game resolution from 256x224 to 320x224, still a native Genesis resolution, so it still works in all the usual Genesis emulators.

The attached widemode.7z (updated) below includes the patches themselves and pre-patched roms: 

Patches can be also found on: meduza-team.ucoz.net

* note: the nhl 94 patch doesn't work on expanded 2MB roms yet, needs adaptation

 

 

 

widemode.7z

Edited April 2, 20233 yr by elfor
Updated to patch version v1.2

I can’t wait to try the 94 rom. I tried it out a few months back on the genesis plus gx widescreen core and even with the graphical issues seeing more of the ice was so insane. It looks like this will be a much more refined way of doing that. 

Thanks for posting here!

Oh man, not enough hours in the day! ThANK-YOU for bringing this here!

Sadly the 94 patch doesn't work on the PS2 '94 Anniversary port either. Got this when I tried to start a game.

Can't really screen shot this, but another heads up, I noticed, for 98 at least, that players tend to disappear when they get too close to the edge of the screen. My guess is that while the background is displaying at the wider resolution, the area in which the player sprites load and unload remain the same as the default version. Haven't decided if that is too jarring yet, but I think I'm going to use it anyway...

I super intrigued by this. I think with some additional bug testing for the sprite load/unloads, that this will be.a great addition to the ROM hack toolkit.

10 hours ago, von Ozbourme said:

Can't really screen shot this, but another heads up, I noticed, for 98 at least, that players tend to disappear when they get too close to the edge of the screen. My guess is that while the background is displaying at the wider resolution, the area in which the player sprites load and unload remain the same as the default version. Haven't decided if that is too jarring yet, but I think I'm going to use it anyway...

I also noticed this in 94.

13 hours ago, von Ozbourme said:

Can't really screen shot this, but another heads up, I noticed, for 98 at least, that players tend to disappear when they get too close to the edge of the screen. My guess is that while the background is displaying at the wider resolution, the area in which the player sprites load and unload remain the same as the default version. Haven't decided if that is too jarring yet, but I think I'm going to use it anyway...

Try re-downloading, i updated the roms with version 1.1, from the readme:

 

Changes in version 1.1:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Fixed NPC sprites disappearing at the very edge of the screen.

8 hours ago, elfor said:

Try re-downloading, i updated the roms with version 1.1, from the readme:

Oh man, that was fast. Can confirm that it has been fixed and is awesome.

Now I have some work to do.

Now I can't help but wonder why '92 isn't getting any love...

Edited February 7, 20233 yr by von Ozbourme

So the last issue I can notice is that in 94, the bench animations and fans that get up and move around are out of place. Still amazing work, and if anyone was super eager these could be turned off by coloring transparency over the sprites.

I am guessing that these are treated differently than the fan arms because they’re multiple tiles moving in conjunction as opposed to new drawings that go over the same tile. 

Edited February 7, 20233 yr by seamor

I LOVE THIS PATCH

Seriously, I hope this could be used in conjunction with all future NHL '94 (and other) mods.  Being able to see more of the ice is a game-changer!

Well how about that.
I was playing around with EA Hockey trying to see if I can figure out an unrelated thing when I noticed that I just did this.

That blue highlight used to be 08F8, but when I changed the value to 6002, it did this.

Although with the empty space when I skate too close to the right, it seems to be more a case of disabling the horizontal framing rather than setting the resolution to something different.

Does make me wonder if there might not be a key in here somewhere.

this is amazing

 

I tried it with NHL '98 just to see how it looked. This hack is very cool. 

I opened the 94-wide rom in Retroarch (downloaded for Classic) and it appears to compress the width. I'm sure it's a video setting - just not sure which one?

How do you apply these patches with modded roms? Would like this with 96 playoff edition and 97 (2012)

8 hours ago, redwing90 said:

How do you apply these patches with modded roms? Would like this with 96 playoff edition and 97 (2012)

The first step would be to get Lunar IPS. It's pretty straight forward from there. You just open the program and it asks you to select the patch, then the ROM you want to patch and then it applies it and you're done. You may want to keep an Standard Resolution backup just in case.

Or, thanks for the interest in the '96 Playoff Edition. If it's easier, I uploaded a widescreen version of that mod to the original post.

14 hours ago, redwing90 said:

How do you apply these patches with modded roms? Would like this with 96 playoff edition and 97 (2012)

+1 to everything @von Ozbourne said, but if you use a Mac, MultiPatch is highly recommended instead.

It doesn't work with modded 94 roms yet, does it?

2 hours ago, Deckard said:

It doesn't work with modded 94 roms yet, does it?

It does not work with the 32-team ROM. It will work with 28-teamers

25 minutes ago, Sean said:

It does not work with the 32-team ROM. It will work with 28-teamers

I've tried it on @CoachMac 1993 season rom and it didn't work, but that rom doesn't have 32 teams

7 minutes ago, Deckard said:

I've tried it on @CoachMac 1993 season rom and it didn't work, but that rom doesn't have 32 teams

It might be incompatible with the 30-team template too. 

I'm trying it on 95/96/98 and the crowd in the stands doesn't move anymore, only people behind the goal in 95 and they're out of synch

Got mixed feelings about the hack, maybe the games are played better with it but the stands look lifeless...

Edited March 14, 20233 yr by Deckard

2 hours ago, Deckard said:

I'm trying it on 95/96/98 and the crowd in the stands doesn't move anymore, only people behind the goal in 95 and they're out of synch

Got mixed feelings about the hack, maybe the games are played better with it but the stands look lifeless...

Well that's too bad. Admittedly I only played a few games with this mod applied and wasn't really paying attention to that.

Although I guess I'm not surprised. I find that modding these games is a lot like playing with LEGO.
You can create anything that your imagination can desire,
...just as long as it works within the limitations of the medium and you realize that you're probably going to end up breaking something else apart to build it.

Edited March 15, 20233 yr by von Ozbourne

12 hours ago, von Ozbourne said:

Well that's too bad. Admittedly I only played a few games with this mod applied and wasn't really paying attention to that.

Although I guess I'm not surprised. I find that modding these games is a lot like playing with LEGO.
You can create anything that your imagination can desire,
...just as long as it works within the limitations of the medium and you realize that you're probably going to end up breaking something else apart to build it.

Well maybe future updates fix it, I really liked the new view less "zoomed" in 96-98, but I also noticed that players won't show in the penalty boxes if a team is shorthanded 

Patches updated at romhacking

Changes in version 1.2:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Fixed a bug with missing fans animation.
- Fixed a bug with the disappearance of players on the penalty bench.
 

Edited March 17, 20233 yr by Deckard

If somebody gets this to work on their 94 mod upload it so we can check it out.

On 3/17/2023 at 9:42 PM, Deckard said:

Patches updated at romhacking

Changes in version 1.2:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Fixed a bug with missing fans animation.
- Fixed a bug with the disappearance of players on the penalty bench.
 

Thanks, i updated the zip above with v1.2 roms!

Does anyone have the v1.0 or v1.1 version of the '94 widescreen patch? I am trying to reverse engineer this, and making good progress, but it would help to compare the devs release notes to the previous versions to understand it better.

Edited August 9, 20241 yr by AdamCatalyst

Greetings, this is my first post. Thank you for supplying the links to these edited ROMS. I am eager to try out '98 (this is the one my kid likes for now), but wondering what the Patch_(v1,2).ips is used for or how I can apply this patch to the NHL 98 (USA) Wide Mode.md file?

Thanks!

PS - As I am new to RetroArch, I am having a really hard time getting thumbnails for this one. If anyone knows how to do that let me know!

Edited November 14, 20241 yr by Bluerose